THE LABOUR PARTY’S finance spokesperson and TD Ged Nash has hit out at what he calls the “dilemmas” and “confusion” in Sinn Féin, and said the “shine is coming off” the party.
Speaking to reporters at the Labour Party’s conference in Dublin this morning, Nash said that younger people were turning off the party.
“I think the shine is coming off for example, Sinn Féin. Sinn Féin are not a genuinely social democratic party, they’re first and foremost a nationalist party,” he said.
He said the party was “going to find it very difficult to maintain that very broad coalition of different interests that they’ve managed to maintain to date in their party”.
Nash was speaking as Sinn Féin has seen its support drop somewhat in recent polls, though it still remains the most popular party in the country by a wide margin.
The latest Business Post/ Red C Poll in February had the party at 28%. Labour was at 4%. However, there has been some reported conflict in the party over hot button issues like immigration and climate change.
Nash pointed to these and other policy issues that he said Labour has led on.
“If you look at the dilemmas and the confusion that’s been internalised in Sinn Féin in relation to, for example, questions that the Labour Party has led on, in relation to the decriminalisation of drugs, what kind of message is that sending out to young people who actually wants real and genuine transformation in this society?”
It’s been my experience, especially in recent months, that younger people especially, and those of the left who are genuinely of the left, are taking a look at Sinn Féin and they don’t like what they see.
In relation to his party’s own electoral chances in the upcoming elections, Nash said he believed Labour would perform better than polls suggest.
“Given how atomised and fragmented the situation is at the moment I genuinely believe… that the Labour Party will perform much much better than the national polls would suggest,” he said.
And I think that people will look the Labour Party for that message of transformation. We are a genuine social democratic, left of centre, mainstream European social democratic party.
Nash also took a swipe at the incoming leader of Fine Gael Simon Harris, who is almost certainly to be elected tomorrow after Leo Varadkar’s announced his shock resignation earlier this week.
He referred to Harris as the “TikTok Taoiseach” and said he will be like the “yappy dog chasing the car. If he caught the car, he wouldn’t know what to do with it”.
With reporting from Christina Finn
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